Chapter 9
Alex headed her car toward Betty’s house, Betty in the passenger seat. Alex wanted to see the layout and all the issues Betty had pointed out. Betty’s daughter would meet them at the coffee shop and take her mother back to her place. Alex wanted to make sure this was done quietly. If the intruder was still around, watching, she wanted him or her to not realize the cops had found out about Betty’s house. It was the perfect opportunity to go in, set up cameras, and see if they could find out what the hell was going on. There was also a good chance this person had already left the area. But she’d take whatever opportunity she could.
Betty pointed out the house. Instead of parking out front, Alex parked down the street. She really didn’t want anybody to know they were here or which house they would enter. She pulled on a jacket from her trunk and, with Betty at her side, they walked toward the house and passed it. She went into the neighbor’s backyard and around, as if going to a different house, then slipped behind to Betty’s house. With Betty safely behind her, Alex pulled her weapon and stepped inside. She listened but couldn’t hear or see anything.
From where she stood, she could see two officers in the opposite backyard. They hopped the fence and joined them. They went in ahead of Alex and did a quick sweep through the property. When clear, she let Betty in. Grabbing the bags and jacket Betty wanted, Alex turned to her and asked, “Do you need anything else right now?”
Betty shook her head. “No. I just … I just want to leave.”
With the men now installing cameras, Alex walked casually with Betty back out front to the street to the car, talking animatedly. Thankfully she was driving her own car, not one of the cruisers. With Betty at her side, she drove to the coffee shop where they met her daughter. As soon as they arrived, the daughter rushed toward her mom.
“Are you all right?” she demanded.
Betty nodded and patted her daughter’s hand. “But you were right. I needed to go to the police.”
The daughter turned to look at Alex. “Do you know anything about the intruder?”
Alex shook her head. “No. But we have four other cases like this. We’re installing cameras in Betty’s house, and, if he returns, we’ll catch him. He might already know she’s back though, and that’s something we can’t do anything about.”
The daughter nodded. “Is it okay if I take her now?”
“Absolutely.” She turned to Betty. “I’ll let you know if we find out anything.”
Betty gave Alex a grateful smile and let her daughter lead her away.
Alex watched them back out of the parking lot and turn onto the main road. This was a huge break in the case for so many reasons. The trouble was, they might not have had enough warning to make the best of it. If the intruder had seen Betty return, then he’d spook and take off. If he hadn’t seen her, he could return. However, if he did come back to her house, and they had the cameras installed …
She pulled out her buzzing phone and saw Macklin was calling. “What’s up?”
“We just ran past the house, the one whose place was broken into while the resident wasn’t there,” he said calmly. “Don’t go getting wild. Gossip around the place travels quickly.”
“That’s really bad news,” she snapped. “Do you realize that, if the intruder finds out, he won’t return to that house?”
“You do have cameras set up for him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I’m not a fool.”
“Never thought you were. But, if you placed a marker on all the houses on a map, do you realize they are all on the right side, forming an irregular semicircle? Chances are good he’ll swing around and try some of the houses on the other side.”
“If he is staying at Betty’s house, however, he may have to go to another location now if he knows she’s back. And that could completely shift his demographics,” she said. It just occurred to her that Mac was extremely out of breath. “Why are you breathing so hard? Are you hurt?”
He chuckled, even as he gasped for breath. “No. We’ve been out for a long run.”
“Of course you just had to run past the house in question. Correct?”
“Yes, of course I did. None of us like to know someone is preying on women.”
“I just don’t know what it is we’re looking for,” she said with a hard sigh. “It’d be good if I didn’t have to trip over you every time. Did you see us?”
“We were there. I saw you walk out with an older woman, presumably the woman who lived there. But you didn’t see us.”
She cast her mind back, frowning as she realized that, in her need to make it look natural, she had deliberately avoided looking around to see if they were being watched. “What if the intruder saw you?”
“It doesn’t matter if he did. We were out for a jog. Totally normal and natural. On any block, on any given day, at any given hour, you can find someone jogging around here. These residences are all for military personnel, remember?”
She hated to say it, but he was right. Everybody, military or not, was into fitness, and running was one of the cheapest and easiest forms of exercise. “I sure as hell hope you didn’t blow my case wide open.”
“I sure as hell hope we did,” he corrected. “But I doubt it. I just hope you have a ghost car or somebody who can sit out front and keep watch.”
“That’s what the cameras are for.” And she hung up on him. She was pissed he had gone to look, even angrier the gossip had picked up on the latest news. She slowly headed back to the office. She wanted to see the map for herself. Way too many houses were still in that area.
She also wanted to find out if body-recognition programs were available—similar to facial recognition. She glanced at her watch and decided she should head there first. She didn’t have an appointment, so when she walked into the security office, nobody was expecting her.
Surprised welcome flashed across their faces. She walked over to the man in charge and said, “Greg, I have a few questions regarding the camera systems in town.”
He motioned to a chair beside him. “Fly away.”
“I understand we have facial recognition, so if somebody catches a face on one of their gates, the camera will take a photo of their face. Do we have any cameras set up where we can use a body-imaging program?”
He looked at her in confusion.
“Let me be a little clearer. I’m looking for a tall, slim, fit person, but I don’t know if it’s male or female.”
He considered her for a long moment. “No. There’s not enough identification points mapped on the human body to do a comparison. The facial recognition program has multiple points identified on each face so, once it has analyzed a person’s facial features, it can search through the video feeds to look for a match. There is no such program for the entire body.”
“Right. I didn’t think there would be …” She smiled. “I can always hope technology has moved faster than expected. So you have hours and hours of video feeds I would have to sit here and go through and potentially never see the person I’m looking for.”
“Possibly, yes. We can’t capture everybody, but, when you consider the traffic cameras and all the security cameras, I highly doubt anybody could have come and left without having been caught on camera somewhere.”
“I was thinking the point of recognition will still be visible. Hip bones, thighs, height, length, things like that.”
“If you give me a body, I can give you their height,” he offered. “And a few other characteristics. But there are no body-type matching programs to streamline the matching-up process.”
“I knew it was a long shot, but I figured I wouldn’t know if I didn’t ask.”
“Are we talking about all the break-ins?”
She nodded. “We just set up cameras inside one house, in case the guy comes back.”
“Comes back? Why did you do it in one and not the others?”
“We had no reason to believe he would return.” She frowned. “Maybe you haven’t heard about that one yet.” She was kicking herself at not having filled him in initially.
When she explained, he asked, “And the neighbors didn’t notice anything off?”
“No. And, if we set up any alarm by talking to the neighbors or have the neighbors react unnaturally, then it’ll chase him off.”
Greg tapped the desk thoughtfully for a long moment, thinking. “I don’t have cameras anywhere close to that area. The closest intersection is over two blocks away.”
“So far, we’re assuming he had approached the house on foot. It’s either that or he’s parking a distance away or he’s living close by. In fact, I ran a plate on a suspicious truck, but the name doesn’t match anything in our fingerprint database and isn’t an obvious match to our victims. I’ll have to dig deeper on that. However, if you look on the map, Betty’s house has a unique location to the others.”
The two of them got up and walked over to the big wall map. She pinned spots on the map where the four break-ins had occurred and then added a pin where Betty’s house was.
“They’re all on the 12-to-6 side of the circle. Why hasn’t he gone from the 6-to-12 side?” He turned to look at her. “You need to answer that question.”
“I had assumed the women were the targets. That he was going to each of those addresses specifically for the women.”
“Sure. Everybody will be assuming that, because it’s empty or a single woman lives there alone, or the people involved know each other.”
“And sometimes intruders don’t need to know anything but that these women know each other.”
He turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, imagine this guy sees a group of five women at a coffee shop. He can’t forget about them, so he goes and could, in theory, check out every one of their homes, mentally making plans to ‘meet’ them for something much different. But, so far, we can’t figure out why he’s gone into any of the houses,” she said. “Nothing’s missing. Nothing has been stolen. He got into an altercation with a boyfriend in one and an altercation with the homeowner in another. She was knocked unconscious, but there was no sexual assault.”
“Nice for her, but it doesn’t exactly clarify what he’s looking for.”
“We’re wondering why he went back to the first house a second time if it was the same person. A neighbor noticed a tall, lean, potentially male individual entering. I searched the house, looking for some clues, but he was no longer there, and, as far as I can tell, he went out the window on the second floor, landed on the roof of the small porch, and took off on the side of the house in the dark.”
She stared around the room filled with equipment. “It’s so frustrating to think you have eyes in so many corners, and yet this guy is slipping in underneath the shadows. Somehow we have to ID him.”
“And now, with everybody hearing about this many break-ins in this one area, everybody should be careful and take extra precautions.”
“The fourth woman woke up in the middle of the night to the intruder in her house,” Alex admitted. “Even though she knew about the B&Es.”
“Did she have security?”
“No.” She gave him a wry look. “Yet you and I both know that most security systems can be disabled easily.”
“Especially the affordable systems. However, there’s still a certain skill required to bypass them.”
With a final smile, she turned to leave. That security center was incredibly well-run. A quick call to the Silver Strand housing manager confirmed there were no cameras—traffic or security—on the housing complex. For her own sake, she did another slow drive past Betty’s house.
There was no sign of movement. There were traffic cameras on the main intersection several blocks away from the complex’s main entrance, but poring over days of video would eat into a lot of man-hours and could be useless. She could give the neighbors a quick call, but she was afraid they’d start looking around and peering out their windows, looking for whoever had been at Betty’s house.
She continued to drive up and down the street, wondering how she could find out who was away. Obviously she knew to look for the usual things, like a pile of newspapers in the driveway, but most people didn’t even get newspapers delivered to the door anymore. Honestly, the standard mail system itself had declined with the advance of emails. And there was no need to stop emails because you could access them from anywhere in the world.
Back at the office, she walked in to find several of the officers standing around talking. “What’s up?”
“We’re just discussing Betty’s house. The cameras have been installed. Now it’s wait-and-see time.” Lance pointed out an office to the side that she didn’t think she’d been in yet. “These monitors are connected to the video cameras. We also have a van outside fully equipped for stakeouts.”
“Hmm. Being mobile could be a big help.” She walked into the room to see one of the officers in front of the monitors. “Anything yet?”
He shook his head. “I just finished running all the tests. Everything is live. Now it’s a matter of waiting.”
She nodded, turned, and walked back into the squad room. “Anybody got any bright ideas as to how we can tell who’s away on vacation?”
The gathered officers turned to look at her in confusion.
“I want to know which houses are empty in that area.”
“We can check with the management company, but tenants aren’t required to check in or out for holidays. It’s a regular rental contract. They could tell us if any houses haven’t been rented, but I doubt they would do so without a warrant. Although we could ask.”
“That’s a good idea. Do you want to follow that up for me? Make sure that includes houses that might be undergoing renovations.”
Lance nodded. “Yes. There could be one or two in the complex, but they’re pretty efficient at filling them up as fast as possible.”
“Makes sense. How do we tell who’s on holidays and may have left their property empty?”
Lance frowned. “Outside of having some access to payroll, none, but, even then, they’re still getting their paychecks if they’re on vacation.”
“Not to mention some people take a few days off, and they just stay at home,” Lance said.
Alex nodded. “Think about it. We used to stop the newspaper service. We used to stop milk delivery. Just for while we’re away. And that was always something you could check up on. I used to call the newspapers and see who stopped service for a week or two. And I will still do that. But it seems like less people read physical newspapers now.”
They racked their brains.
“Outside of asking people to report friends or neighbors who may have left on vacation or left their properties empty, I don’t know if we could find that out,” Lance said.
“And, if we do that, we also alert the intruder what we’re looking for.”
The other two nodded. “Exactly.”
Still thinking, she wandered back into her office. She didn’t want somebody else to get hurt. She’d already warned the public about the break-ins, told people to be vigilant. What she probably needed to do was put out a warning and request anyone to contact the police if they knew of any vacant houses. The intruder would go underground for a period after hearing that, but maybe, in the meantime, they’d get a heads-up on him.
Lance walked in. “I still think we should contact the news.”
“I agree. I was just thinking that. If we could wait until tomorrow, we might have a chance to see if this guy returns to Betty’s house first.”
He nodded. “I agree. Let’s hope we can get through the night without another break-in.”
“Assign someone to check the feed from the security on the intersection outside the housing complex.” She wrote the instructions down on a notepad. “It’s a long shot, but we might spot our intruder walking about.”
He took her note and left her office.
It was almost time to leave. She stayed back and took care of a mess of paperwork that always seemed to clog up her desk. The more she had risen in the ranks, the more reports and paperwork she had to do. And still had to verbally report to her superiors. That didn’t help her mood.
By the time she was done, she was grouchy and tired. She walked into the sun and smiled. Talk about a mood changer. The weather was dynamite here.
She’d had enough winter back east that she appreciated all good weather. And right now, it was typical California sunshine. She looked down at her jeans and T-shirt and thought maybe it was time for a jog on the beach.
She headed back home and quickly changed. She hadn’t been on a run at least since last week, and that wasn’t good. It was part of her job to stay fit.
She went through physical training and testing on a regular basis. But, anytime she got busy like this, it was almost impossible to maintain a routine. Just thinking of Macklin running past that house was enough to put her on edge again. That damned fool.
He might be smart and know what was what when it came to his job, but he wasn’t a pro at hers. She laced up her sneakers and headed outside. She had gone for leggings, a sports bra, and a tank top.
She had a headband wrapped around her wrist several times. With her hair in a ponytail most of time, she was fine without it. But sometimes, when the heat and humidity got to her, it was all she could do to stop the sweat from running into her eyes. She started off on a nice loose jog. She didn’t know why she decided to run locally and not at the beach, except she wanted to people watch.
Every time she saw somebody super tall or lean now, she had to study them. She kept up her steady pace for a good twenty minutes. Up ahead was the park. She steadied her breath to speed up and raced around it, laughing and cheering herself on. When she got to the far corner, she slowed her pace again and jogged through several more blocks. When she came to a familiar house, she realized, to her horror, she’d done exactly what Macklin had done. Like a homing pigeon, she’d jogged through the neighborhoods that were broken into.
She was on neighborhood watch, she told herself. The fact that she was a police officer gave much more credence to her trip but not enough to make her feel any better. She hadn’t intended to come here. Still, she could see Betty’s house up toward the end of the block. She surveyed the area, seeing groups of people walking, some walking home from work, others driving, parking their cars, and getting out.
She knew the ghost car with a camera setup was somewhere ahead. She casually jogged down the road. The last thing she wanted was to be hassled when she went into the office in the morning.
As she passed Betty’s house, she thought she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced toward the house to see a face staring back at her. She smiled casually and kept going. But in her mind, she was like, “Who the hell was that?”
One house away, she pulled out her cell phone and called Lance. “I just jogged past Betty’s. Check the cameras. There was a face in the front window.”
She heard his startled exclamation as he raced toward the camera room. She could hear the raised voices.
Lance said, “He didn’t see anybody. He’s been sitting in front of the monitors the whole time.”
“Any chance it’s not working? Could the intruder have done something to the cameras?”
“He shouldn’t be able to,” Lance said. “Are you sure you saw someone at the house? It wasn’t just your imagination?”
If he had been in the same room with her, she would have cut him down for that comment. But even then, she had to wonder, Had she imagined it?
*
It wasn’t a good idea. Mac knew it wasn’t. He stared down at his phone, his finger itching to call her. He got her to agree to lunch. He knew he could push it to dinner. But how many times could he see her or contact her in a day before it became abnormal? Of course he always had Marsha on his mind. The woman had driven him nuts. Is that how Alex would feel if he called her? But he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
He poured himself yet another beer from the growler on the counter. He and Corey had split the first half. Now he was working his way through the second half on his own. He walked out to a small deck and slumped down into the chair, kicking his feet up over the railing.
There were a lot of good things about his life right now. And a lot that could be a whole lot better. His days were normal—training, upgrading his skills, learning. The IT seminar had been fascinating. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep his mind off his problems right now. All the break-ins and Marsha’s murder had to be connected. That one of the houses had been one Bill had lived in surely was a coincidence. But Mac didn’t know how this all worked together. Trying to sort it out was a circle that didn’t seem to stop. And not having access to the information he needed was frustrating.
He let his mind freewheel as he sat here, holding his cold beer. Thoughts flowing in, flowing out. With Betty now gone from her house, he wondered if the asshole would return. If the intruder had any decent instincts, he’d avoid it like the plague. Unless he had a way to disengage the cameras or keep them on an endless loop. Macklin frowned as he considered that. If you wired the camera to do an endless loop of the last hour or so, then, in theory, the intruder could stay there all he wanted, and the police would eventually give up on that concept.
How hard would that be? Not hard if the intruder was good with electronics—or even if he was just good at research. The internet had step-by-step instructions.
Knowing it was a slim excuse, feeble at best, Macklin hit the Dial button. When Alex answered, her tone was wry. “Macklin? Pretty sure I had lunch with you already today.”
“Is there a law against calling you?” he asked, dry humor mixed with a little bit of hesitation.
She chuckled. “No. Not at all. But was there something specific or were you just checking to make sure I’m eating dinner?”
At that, he laughed out loud. “I was thinking that, just because you have the cameras up in that empty house, it doesn’t mean you’ll catch him.”
“Of course it doesn’t mean that,” she said. “Just think about what you said. He may not even return to the house. So of course there’s no guarantee we’ll catch him.”
“Or he’ll return to the house, switch the camera to an endless loop. And all your cameras will pick up is the exact same scene repeatedly in the house, and then you won’t know he’s in there.”
Dead silence was on her end. “How hard is that to do?” she asked, her tone hesitant. “I went past there today, jogging. And, I swear to God, I saw somebody in the house staring at me.”
“What?” He bounded to his feet. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. But there’s no sign of anyone on the security camera feed,” she said. “They are running a check on the system now, and two officers are doing drive-bys. The lights were off, and curtains were partially closed, so they hadn’t recognized when daylight darkened.”
“I’ve just come out of a seminar on hacking and IT fraud. And it occurred to me, while I sat here on my deck, that it’s quite possible to put that camera feed on an endless loop. You’ll never know.”
“Which means, I have to go back into the house.”
“Not alone,” he snapped.
She snapped right back at him. “I’m a cop, remember?”
“Well, I’m not a cop, but this is what I deal with often,” he said in a low tone. “You also have to go in undercover. As soon as he makes you, this operation is a bust.”
“I do know how to do my job,” she reminded him, but there was less heat in her tone.
“I don’t want any more women hurt. There is a killer out there.”
“Remember that whole thing about me being in law enforcement? I’m the one people call when there is this kind of trouble.”
“No. You’re who gets called afterward,” he reminded her. “I’m the one they call all around the world before this part happens.” He couldn’t help himself. “I’ll meet you there.”
Then he hung up without giving her a chance to respond. He slammed back the last bit of his beer, changed to his running shoes, and headed out. His phone rang before he even hit the street. He pulled it out and answered it. “I’m in my running shoes, and I’m jogging. You can drive a block away and meet me at the corner off North Wallington.”
She groaned. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
“You won’t go out for a real date, will you?” Then he hung up. She was still spluttering, but it was music to his ears. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to keep her off-center. But there was something going on around this place, and, if he could help, he would.